


The Resistance Pilot and the Jedi

by AidanChase



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Canon Rewrite, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Force Sensitive Finn, Force sensitive Poe, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:33:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24886882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AidanChase/pseuds/AidanChase
Summary: General Leia stared at him with a measured gaze. “There is nothing you can do for him.” There was grief in her voice, grief like Poe had felt at his mother’s bedside, like he had felt clutching Ben’s saber in the charred ruins of the temple. It was grief without hope.Poe refused to give up on hope.. . .Star Wars Sequel AU where Poe trained at the temple with Ben before joining the Resistance (because being a Spice smuggler is a bantha shit backstory).
Relationships: Finn/Rose Tico, Poe Dameron/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	The Resistance Pilot and the Jedi

**Author's Note:**

> This AU has been sitting in my head for months. Please forgive any Star Wars-world inaccuracies; I've been steeped in Harry Potter for so long I forgot what it was like to breathe new air.

Poe Dameron was full of so many memories. 

He remembered sitting in his mother’s lap as she had taught him what every switch and dial on the dash of her A-Wing did. He remembered standing by his father as they had buried his mother beneath a beautiful tree. He remembered playing in its branches and telling himself it was his mother’s heartbeat he heard in its bark. He remembered caring for the tree after burning it in an experiment gone wrong, and that was when Poe told his father about the heartbeat. That was when Poe learned about the Force.

He remembered meeting Princess Leia. She had told him stories of his mother and father’s heroism in battle. She had praised his mother’s bravery and skill as a pilot, and then she’d told him about the Jedi.

Poe remembered meeting Ben Solo. Ben had been full of stories, like Leia, but Ben’s stories were not about the war. Ben’s stories were about the Force and the Jedi. Ben’s stories were about adventures with Luke Skywalker and duels against dark Force-wielders.

Poe remembered training with Ben and Luke. He remembered building his own lightsaber, and wondering if his mother would be proud of him. He remembered convincing Ben to steal a pair of decommissioned X-Wings and racing across the stars, daring each other to fly farther and farther before Luke could catch them. Poe remembered staying up late into the night with Ben, as Poe shared his memories of the tree from his home. He remembered Ben talking about his dreams, and the voice that spoke of power.

Poe did not remember the destruction of the Jedi temple and the death of all those who had trained with him. Poe did not remember it because he had not been there.

General Leia had invited him to fly for her Resistance, alongside his adoptive uncle and a team of pilots. The New Republic was crumbling, and Poe found the dream of repeating his mother’s heroism more alluring than finishing his study under Luke. Poe had left, and he would always blame himself for that. He would always blame himself for Ben’s death.

Until Leia had sent him to Jakku.

Poe had mixed feelings about the mission to find Luke. He wanted to blame Luke for the loss of Ben, for the loss of all the younglings who had trained with them. But Luke had been a mentor to him, as much as General Leia, as much as his father and mother. Luke was both pilot and Jedi, and Poe had always admired that. When Leia had asked him to find the map to the first Jedi temple, he couldn’t say no.

But if he had known that his mission would take him straight to Kylo Ren, he might not have said yes.

Poe was impressed by Ren’s power at first. It was everything Ben had described in his stories of Sith and Inquisitors, in all those people who dabbled in the Dark Side of the Force, those who sought power and control. Poe wished for his lightsaber, the one he had crafted while Ben had stood over his shoulder and teased him for his choices of scrap, but it was buried under his bunk on D’Qar, in a small box alongside one other.

Then again, Poe was not sure his lightsaber would be much help. Ren took complete control of him and the shot from his blaster. Poe had been unable to move, unable to resist as the Troopers had taken him to Ren. Poe had reached for the Force, then recoiled as he brushed against Ren’s power. It had been overwhelming, full of so much anger, and something familiar that Poe was afraid to look too closely at. Poe knew his own meager, rusty abilities with the Force were powerless against someone like Ren, and when Poe was powerless, he liked to run his mouth. 

“So what, I talk first, you talk first?”

He teased Kylo Ren because it was easy, because when Poe faced situations of powerlessness he refused to surrender himself. He had once thought Ben understood that about him. The Troopers could beat him all they wanted, their droids could torture him as they wished, but Poe would not give in.

And maybe Ben had known that, because it was Ren who came to interrogate him next.

“I had no idea we had the best pilot in the Resistance on board,” Ren said.

And maybe Poe should have admitted it then. The barb hidden in the compliment should have been recognizable.

“Comfortable?” Ren asked.

“Not really.” Because Poe did not just maintain his sense of self, he flaunted it. He was sore, tired, bloody, and a little bit dizzy, but he kept up his attitude, the parts of him that he could control.

“I’m impressed,” Ren said, voice thick with distortion, and that distortion even thicker as Poe had struggled to stay conscious. “No one has been able to get out of you what you did with the map.”

And maybe that was when Poe admitted it to himself. Maybe that was when Poe admitted that he knew who Kylo Ren was. “You might want to rethink your technique,” he said, and he wondered if he said it because he wanted Ren to fight him. Because he wanted to be proven wrong.

But Kylo Ren did not prove Poe wrong. Ren raised his hand and, using the power of the Force, pushed his way into Poe’s mind.

“Where is it?” Ren asked.

“The Resistance will not be intimidated by you.”

But Poe had never been good at this part of the Force. He was always so open with who he was, so unlike Ben and Luke who could close themselves off from others. He tried to keep Ren out, but Ren knew him. Ren knew him all too well, and the Force that delved into Poe’s mind was all too familiar.

Kylo Ren was Ben Solo. 

And admitting that truth was thing that finally broke Poe Dameron.

Poe carried that knowledge as Finn had helped him escape. He carried that knowledge as he crawled away from the wreckage of his and Finn’s crash. Even when Poe could not remember where he was or why, he could remember this: Ben Solo was alive.

That knowledge was why when Poe finally returned to D’Qar, he forced his way into General Leia’s quarters.

“You knew!” he shouted, and threw his helmet dramatically to the floor.

It crashed into a display, and the image flickered. General Leia dismissed the hologram without so much so much as a raised eyebrow.

“Close the door, Poe.”

She hadn’t called him that since he’d been ten years old, and she’d offered to take him to meet Luke Skywalker.

And Poe certainly felt ten years old. He felt the way he had felt as they’d buried his mother. He felt the way he had felt as General Leia had told him what had happened at the Jedi temple, and she had refused him permission to fly there to see for himself.

He hadn’t listened, though. He had gone anyway, and had searched the wreckage himself.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he demanded. “You had to know I would find out.”

General Leia raised her hand and slid the door closed with the power of the Force. It was so rare she used the Force, and now Poe wondered if it was because she, too, had closed herself to it, if she had hidden herself from it because of what Ben had done.

“Luke and I made a decision to protect you.”

“I’m not a child! I’m out here putting my life on the line for the Resistance, for your war, but you want to claim you’re protecting me?” Poe ran his hands through his hair, unsure what to do with them. He paced, because he had to move. Adrenaline coursed through him, untempered by his difficult journey back to the Resistance’s base.

“And now that you know,” Leia said, “what good does it do?”

“It doesn’t matter what good it does — you lied to me!”

“No. I did not. Ben died that night. The man that you encountered… that was not Ben, and you know it.”

Poe pressed his hands against the table that served as her desk. He leaned against it, palms flat on cold steel, but it did nothing to cool the anger in him. “I felt Ben. I would not be here talking to you now, angry as I am, if there had been no trace of Ben in Kylo Ren!”

General Leia stared at him with a measured gaze. “There is nothing you can do for him.” There was grief in her voice, grief like Poe had felt at his mother’s bedside, like he had felt clutching Ben’s saber in the charred ruins of the temple. It was grief without hope.

Poe refused to give up on hope.

“Like hell there isn’t.”

The words were hardly out of his mouth when a wave crashed through him. It was grief and loss but it was not his own. He staggered under the weight of it and slumped into a chair. General Leia put her hand to her heart and stared into the distance, eyes wide.

It would be mere minutes until the Resistance learned of the destruction of the Hosnian system — an entire system — and simultaneously received word that the missing BB-8 unit had been spotted on Takodana.

Poe was always fully himself, and while that meant being haughty in the face of danger that also meant burying his grief, because it was not a part of him worth showing off. He would lead the Blue and Red Squadrons to Takodana without telling them how the First Order had tortured him. He would ignore their concerns and suggestions that he stay behind in a bacta tank in case that bruise on his head was a concussion. He would lead them as if nothing had happened, and take down every TIE in that blue sky as if it were piloted by Snoke himself, because it was the only person Poe could blame for what had happened to Ben.

He could not blame Luke or Leia, who had mentored him like a father and mother. He could not blame Ben for dreams that were out of his control. And most of all, Poe could not blame himself.

—————————— ✦✧✦✧ ——————————

While the other pilots prepared their ships and astromechs for the journey to Starkiller Base, Poe slipped away to his quarters and crawled under his bunk. He buried his face in the crook of his arm to avoid inhaling dust and reached back for the small metal container, its scorched and scuffed exterior belying the value of what was inside.

He undid the locks and lifted the lid, revealing soft purple fabric, and nestled in that fabric were the hilts of two lightsabers.

His own was burnished bronze, with a red stripe down its side, reminiscent of his mother’s A-wing. Ben’s was silver, with a splash of yellow, blue, and purple at the emitter that had always reminded Poe of a sunset.

Poe had never told General Leia that he had brought Ben’s saber back that day that he had snuck away to see the ruins of the temple. He had been afraid of what it would do to her, to hold her son’s saber. Now Poe wondered if he should hand it to her, just to see the look on her face. 

But it wouldn’t help to be angry with General Leia. Holding onto anger was not what Luke had taught him, and holding onto anger would not save Ben. Poe clipped the two sabers to the back of his belt and grabbed a new jacket to cover them with, since he’d given his to Finn.

Poe hurried through the make-shift air field, ignoring shouts from his squadron, and headed straight for the _Millenium Falcon_. His plan to smuggle himself aboard was already doomed; he’d been seen by too many others. But it was officially cut short when he bumped into his General.

“Commander Dameron,” General Leia said. “I’m sure you have a good explanation for not being in your flight suit.”

“I’m going with Han,” Poe said.

“Your assignment is to destroy the —”

“I know what I have to do.”

He was ready to shove her aside, the woman he respected and admired if it meant having a chance to talk to Ben again. He was ready to climb aboard the _Falcon_ as it took off, and if that did not work, he would follow it in his X-wing.

“Your squadron needs you.”

“Ben needs me. I just need to talk to him — I know I can get through to him.”

General Leia looked him over and her eyes lingered on the purpling bruise just above his left eye.

“I had a vision…” There was not just grief in her voice, but utter heartbreak. And then it was gone, and she was his General once more. “Do what you must.”

Poe ran past her and climbed into the _Falcon_ , just as her engines started. He did not have time to stop and wonder how such a heap of junk had become one of the renowned symbols of the Rebellion and the fall of the Empire. He ran to the cockpit, skidding to a stop in its doorway as Chewbacca accelerated to lightspeed.

“Poe!” Finn shouted in surprise.

Han glanced over his shoulder, looked Poe up and down, then turned back to the controls.

Poe swallowed. He had never gotten along especially well with Han Solo. There was something about the way they both demanded attention that made it hard for them to share the same space. Wisely, he made no comment about how poorly the _Falcon_ was handling in lightspeed.

“Poe, what are you doing here?” Finn asked.

“You want to save your friend, and I want to save mine,” he said.

Han snorted.

“Something wrong with that?” Poe asked.

“I don’t remember you and Ben being friends.”

Finn looked between Poe and Han, but he seemed to guess the unspoken parts of this conversation ran far deeper than he could know. So instead, he asked how they would be getting past the shields on Starkiller Base. It was a good question, one Han might not have answered if Poe had asked it.

“Their shields have a fractional refresh rate,” Han said.

“Right,” said Poe, unable to help himself. “That’s what keeps anything traveling slower than lightspeed from entering their atmosphere.”

“Did you want to answer the Big Deal’s question or should I?”

“Sorry. Continue.”

“No, that was it. You said it all. Nothing slower than lightspeed gets through.”

Finn figured out what Han meant faster than Poe did. “You’re making the landing approach at lightspeed?”

Poe laughed. He laughed so hard, he fell into the seat behind Han and buried his face in his hands. Of course Han hadn’t told the General the plan; it was the exact sort of reckless plan Poe would have made himself.

“Alright, kid, if you’re done pissing yourself, find something to hold onto. Get ready, Chewie.”

The Wookie roared and Finn and Poe each grabbed the sides of the _Falcon_. Despite his fear of what they might find, Poe couldn’t stop grinning. He lived for these high-risk missions, the space between victory and death, accomplishing something that had never before been accomplished. It was in these moments that he felt closer to his mother than ever.

Chewbacca brought the _Falcon_ out of lightspeed and Han hastily pulled up to avoid colliding with a snow-covered mountain. Poe had not expected snow, but he supposed it made sense. All the heat would be directed at the core, leaving the surface frigid. 

The _Falcon_ collided with a copse of trees, demolishing the small forest and probably destroying years of scientists’ work developing a self-sustaining supply of oxygen. The ship broke out of the forest and slid into the snow. It skidded and skidded — just barely coming to a stop before the edge of a cliff.

Poe applauded. “Well done. That’ll be one for the history holos. Finn, lead the way to that shield generator.”

Han grumbled something about who should and shouldn’t be showboating, but followed Finn through the snow and to an outpost on the base.

“The flooding tunnel is over that ridge,” Finn said, ducking against one of the walls to avoid being spotted by any wandering patrol droids. “We’ll get in that way.”

“What was your job when you were based here?” asked Han.

Poe expected something about guard or patrol, since when he had met Finn, it had been on Jakku when Kylo Ren had slaughtered a village.

“Sanitation,” Finn said.

Poe barely managed to pull himself away from that night on Jakku to get between Han and Finn as Han slammed Finn into the wall. 

“Sanitation?” Han hissed. “Then how do you know how to disable the shields?”

“I don’t,” said Finn, ducking under Poe’s arm and stepping away from Han. “I’m just here to get Rey.”

Han grabbed for Finn again and Poe pushed him back.

“People are counting on us! The galaxy is counting on us!” Though Han whispered to avoid being caught, Poe remembered this exact tone from a very stern lecture he and Ben had once gotten over the dangers of opening smuggling holds when you didn’t know exactly what was inside.

“I can disable the shields,” Poe said. “I can figure it out.”

“You’re a pilot!” Han shoved Poe aside. “A cocky, arrogant Resistance pilot with no knowledge of the First Order’s codes.”

“We’ll use the Force,” Finn suggested.

“That’s not how the Force works!” Han said. “That’s not how any of this works.” He pointed a finger at Finn. “You’re here because you’re supposed to be able to get those shields down.” He pointed at Poe. “I still don’t know why the hell you’re here.”

Chewbacca roared in complaint.

“He’s right,” said Poe. “We don’t have time to argue about this. Let’s just get inside and go from there.”

“That’s not what he said!” Han snapped as he followed Finn and Poe over the ridge. “He complained about being cold, which is rich, coming from him.”

“Huh. Must be a different dialect,” said Poe. “I took Southern Wookie in flight school. Chewie, where are you from?”

“It’s called Shyriiwook. Now shut your trap and move faster.” Han gave him a light shove. As he did, his hand bumped into the small of Poe’s back. Han’s voice dropped from his furious whisper to something quieter and angrier. “That’s not a blaster under that jacket, is it?” 

“I don’t plan to use it,” Poe hissed.

“Then why’d you bring it?”

Poe didn’t have an answer.

Finn led them inside the base and told them his plan to get the shields down. Poe didn't think capturing a high ranking officer and forcing them to break protocol would work very well, even if they did have a Wookie.

“Maybe we split up,” Poe suggested, pulling his blaster from the holster on his thigh. “Finn wants to find Rey, and Han and Chewbacca can take out the shields.”

“What are you going to do?” Finn asked.

“I’ve got to return something.”

“Finn’s the one who knows the base,” Han said, “so we all stick with Finn. Take us to the shield generator, kid.”

“We could blow up the shield generator?” Poe suggested, but he deserved the cuff on his shoulder as Han shoved him forward after Finn. They didn’t need to call attention to themselves. It was better that the Resistance arrive before the First Order realized something was wrong. They also needed to be able to get off of this base in one piece. At least, Han, Chewbcca, Finn, and his friend Rey deserved to get off this base. Poe thought he might have to stay behind to find Ben.

Chewbacca was able to carry out Finn’s plan expertly; capture by a Wookie and Finn, Han, and Poe’s blasters were sufficient intimidation methods to convince the officer to lower the shields. And Poe had to admit that Han’s suggestion they toss the officer in a trash compactor was inspired.

“We don’t have much time to get Rey,” Finn said.

Poe wondered if Ren would be on the bridge at a time like this, or if he would be interrogating the prisoner. He didn’t think there was time for both.

“Lead the way to the detention center,” Poe said. “Let’s move.”

They didn’t have to go very far. Finn and Poe were in the middle of discussing how to blast the doors open and what sort of attention it might draw when Han pointed out a figure, scaling the walls of the nearby docking bay.

Apparently Rey hadn’t been waiting around for Finn to come and rescue her. Poe, as a recent prisoner of the First Order, respected her resolve and determination. She’d even managed to pick up a blaster from a Trooper.

They hurried around to the bay and ran into Rey, nearly literally. 

“Finn!” she hesitated to lower her blaster as she looked over her rescuers. “What are you doing here?”

“We came back for you,” Finn said. “Did he hurt you? Are you —”

She threw her arms around him, and Poe looked away. He followed Han’s gaze, to the end of the corridor, watching for Troopers. But something drew his gaze back to Rey and he saw her staring at him over Finn’s shoulder.

She let go of Finn and continued staring at Poe.

He raised an eyebrow. “Do I have something in my teeth?” He made a show of running his tongue over them.

“It’s you,” she said.

“It’s me,” he agreed. “At least, I think so.”

“I saw you —”

“What?”

“In Ren’s mind.”

“What?” Finn asked sharply, and Poe felt similarly. 

As Han urged them away, out of the base, Poe carefully opened himself up to the Force. There were times it flowed through him unbidden, like when he fell out of the tree that grew by his home, or when he got caught up in flying a difficult mission, or when an entire system was destroyed. But most of the time, Poe ignored the Force. There was too much darkness in it since the temple had been destroyed, too much fear.

But he opened up to it now, and felt Rey’s energy. He was immediately overwhelmed by her power. There was fear there, and anger, and a power so familiar that Poe retreated as soon as their energy touched. He had not felt energy like this since Ben.

She glanced over her shoulder at him, suspicion in her deep brown eyes. He wondered what she had seen. He did not think it had been his most recent interaction with Ren, or she would not be so suspicious of him. Did that mean that somewhere inside Kylo Ren she had seen Poe the way that Ben saw him?

Hope swelled in Poe. Leia was wrong. Ben was still in there.

That hope faded as soon as they reached the surface of the base. Overhead was a firefight and Poe could only stare in horror as his pilots — his friends — dodged blasts from cannon towers and TIE fighters alike. They were losing, and from his position, it did not look like they had done much damage to the thermal oscillator.

He should be up there. He had failed them as he had failed Ben.

“We can’t leave,” Han said, and Poe didn’t understand. He was ready to steal the _Falcon_ from them and help his fighters. He hadn’t seen Kylo Ren since they’d arrived and for all he knew, Ren had left the base entirely when the shields had dropped. He needed to go where he was needed.

“We’ve got a bag of explosives,” Han said. “Let’s use them.”

“How do we get in?” Poe asked. “They know we’re here by now —”

“I can get you in,” Rey said.

Poe followed Han and Chewbacca into the building that housed the thermal oscillator. Finn and Rey went to the other side, to the maintenance controls. Poe, Han, and Chewbacca dispatched the Troopers with ease. They were all three of them excellent shots.

But now the three of them stood in the corridor, with six locked doors of durasteel between them and the thermal oscillator. Poe was about to ask, “Now what?” when the doors slid open.

“Girl knows her stuff,” Han said, and led the way.

They reached the oscillator, an enormous piece of machinery only accessible by a series of maintenance catwalks. The heat from the room was such a stark contrast from the cold outside that Poe sneezed. It wasn't long before he began to sweat. 

“Set the charges against every other column,” Han said, and handed Poe a bag.

Chewbacca roared.

“Right. That’s a better idea,” Han said, and took the bag back from Poe. “You take the top, I’ll go down below.”

“What about me?” Poe asked.

Han tossed him the detonator. “Don’t blow it until we’re clear.”

“Do I look that stupid?”

Han didn’t answer. 

Poe kept one hand on his blaster and the other and the detonator as Han and Chewbacca placed the explosives around the base and ceiling of the oscillator. It was a good plan. The pistons at the top would come crashing down on a weakened base. All it would take was a good shot from the top to blow the planet sky high. Poe wondered if Jess would get the final shot, or if she was even still alive. She would be acting leader in his place, since he had abandoned his post.

When Poe had been offered the position as a pilot within the Resistance, he had never thought he was choosing between two things. Luke had been pilot and Jedi, and so why couldn’t Poe have that too? That was what Leia saw in him, after all. She’d always said that he reminded her of Luke. But choosing the Resistance was what had lost him Ben. And now, he’d chosen Ben and lost the Resistance. He wondered why it had to be a choice at all. He should never have had to choose between protecting the galaxy or saving a friend.

He was so lost in his own head that he hadn’t heard the Troopers enter the ground floor until he felt the Force crash into him. It was the wave of power he’d felt in Rey, but it wasn’t Rey at all.

Poe holstered his blaster and reached for the saber at his back. He hesitated, hand running over each ignition switch. There was his, a brass push button, and then there was Ben’s, a switch that was difficult to distinguish from the plating, but he’d run his hands over this weapon so many times in the weeks after he had lost Ben that he it as well as he knew his own.

“Ben!”

But it wasn’t Poe who shouted. Poe looked down over the railing and saw Han Solo stepping out onto the catwalk. Kylo Ren stood at the center, and he turned. Poe’s hand tightened on the railing.

“Han Solo,” Kylo Ren said, and Poe’s heart raced. It was not just the distortion of Ben’s voice, but the careless way he addressed his father. “I’ve been waiting for this day for a long time.”

The doors above opened and Poe looked away from Ben for a moment to see Rey and Finn enter. He felt Rey’s energy and Ren’s energy side by side, and he knew what he had thought when he had met Rey had not been any sort of fluke. The power in these two was identical. He did not know how or why, but he knew they were connected. The energy between them was so great that Poe felt nauseous and overwhelmed. He hadn’t felt the force this strongly in his life, not even when he’d touched his kyber crystal for the first time.

Someone came up behind him and he jumped, grabbing one of the sabers, but it was just Chewbacca. He growled softly, but Poe didn’t know what he was saying, and he couldn’t find it in him to make a clever guess.

“Take off that mask,” Han said as he approached Ren. “You don’t need it.”

“What do you think you’ll see if I do?”

“The face of my son.”

Poe gauged the distance between his position on the balcony above against the catwalk below. It was a long jump, but if he used the Force, he might be able to make it. He remembered how Ren had controlled him so completely on Jakku and thought that he wouldn’t stand a chance if Ren decided to challenge his control over the Force. It might be worth the risk anyway.

And then Ren removed his mask, and Poe forgot what he was planning.

He saw Ben. He was older than Poe remembered, but of course he would be. Six years had aged them both. But he was still the Ben that Poe remembered.

Even as Ren said, “Your son is gone!” Poe did not believe it. He could not believe that Ben was truly dead, not when he’d been given hope.

“He was weak and foolish like his father,” Ren continued. “So I destroyed him.”

Poe ran his thumb over the ignition switch — Ben’s ignition switch.

“That’s what Snoke wants you to believe,” Han said. “But it’s not true.” He continued approaching Ren and Poe felt a wave of fear wash over him, fear that was not his own. 

It belonged to Rey, so open and vulnerable with her energy. So like Ben. And then anger crashed into Poe as Han said, “My son is alive.”

It was like being caught between two tides and Poe struggled to stay afloat. He had never been as strong as Ben, nor even as strong as Luke. Between Rey’s fear and Ren’s anger, Poe thought he might drown. He grasped for the peace, the serenity that Luke had tried to instill in him and Ben, but they’d both been so reckless, so eager for the strength the Force offered, that the lessons had never stuck. And now Poe could not remember how to stand firm. 

“No,” Ren said. “The Supreme Leader is wise.”

“Snoke is using you for your power,” Han said. “When he gets what he wants, he’ll crush you. You know it’s true.”

And then Han and Ren were mere inches apart. Poe swallowed down the bile in his throat and reevaluated the jump to the catwalk. He could make it. If he could just get to Ren, if he could put Ben’s lightsaber back in his hand, he would have his friend back.

“It’s too late.” And though Ren whispered it, Poe heard it clear as day. He wondered if Rey could hear it, too.

“No, it’s not. Leave here with me. Come home. We miss you.”

And there was more than anger in Ren now, something deep, something Poe recognized from the tree he had tended back home. There was pain, and pain coupled with power was a dangerous thing.

“I’m being torn apart,” Ren said. “I want to be free of this pain.”

Poe put his feet on the railing and prepared to jump.

“I know what I have to do… but I don’t know if I have the strength to do it. Will you help me?”

Poe took in a deep breath and jumped.

A hand on the back of his jacket yanked him backwards and Poe stumbled into the wall. Chewbacca hissed a warning at him.

“I can make it,” Poe hissed back.

A loud metal clang echoed through the enormous room as Ren dropped his helmet onto the catwalk. Poe tried to climb back on the railing but Chewbacca put a hand on his chest.

And then the room went dark. Not completely — the red light of the thermal oscillator still illuminated Ren and Han below — but the light from outside, from the star that Starkiller Base slowly consumed as it charged the First Order’s weapon vanished. They had seconds to get Ben and Han out of here if they were going to save the Resistance.

And then a brighter red light filled the chamber. Ren’s saber ignited, and the blade pierced Han’s chest. Chewbacca and Rey both shouted. Poe fell against the railing as Chewbacca lifted his blaster. He felt frozen now, as fear and anger in both Rey and Ren pinned him in place. His own grief rose like a tide, because it wasn’t just Han that he lost, though it was Han who fell from the catwalk.

Poe knew that Ben was gone.

Poe clung to that grief as Chewbacca fired and struck Ren. The grief hurt, but it was the only thing that made him feel like himself, that kept him from being swept away by Rey and Ren. He stumbled after Chewbacca as the Wookie shot their way through the Troopers. He knew he should grab his blaster, but he clung to Ben’s saber instead. Chewbacca propelled him through a door and roared and though Poe didn’t actually speak Shyriiwook, he thought he knew what Chewbacca was trying to say. He remembered the detonator in his other hand and he pushed it without wondering if Ren would be able to get out.

Chewbacca pushed Poe toward the _Falcon_ and Poe slipped in the snow. He looked up at the sky, dark without the light of a central star, and the firefight still going on overhead. The only sign of the Resistance were the few bursts of light as they fired on TIEs. One of them had to hit the oscillator. They had to.

Chewbacca roared for Poe’s attention.

“Finn,” Poe said, “and Rey — they’re still —”

Chewbacca roared again. 

“You get the ship, and I’ll get them.”

Poe did not know if Chewbacca agreed with the plan or not, but Poe hurried around the building that house the oscillator. It was easy to find Rey, as long as Poe was listening to the Force. Her energy pulsed so loudly. He followed that energy into the tree line, followed the feelings of pain and anger until it overwhelmed him. Poe did what he could to close himself off from the Force, to regain his sense of self. He heard Rey scream, and followed that instead. He heard Finn yell and when Poe found them, Finn had ignited someone’s blue lightsaber, and he rushed Ren.

Finn swung wildly, untrained and unbalanced, but Ren swung wildly, too. He was wounded and out of control. If Poe could keep his sense of self, if Poe could fight without being overwhelmed by Ren’s power, maybe they stood a chance.

Poe ignited Ben’s saber.

“Ben!” he shouted, but Ren did not turn. He shoved Finn to the ground and Finn rolled out of the way before Ren could strike.

Poe skidded down the sloped, snowy hill and charged Ren. Ren ducked under Finn’s wide swing, cut up, knocked the blade from Finn’s hand, and cut Finn in a single swoop up his back. He turned just in time to parry Poe’s strike.

The heat of Ren’s red saber sizzled against the blue blade.

Ren’s lip curled. “I don’t remember blue being your color.”

Poe ignored Ren’s anger and clung to his sense of self, just as he had done while the Troopers had tortured him, while Ren had tortured him. “I’m borrowing a friend’s. He didn’t seem to need it much.”

“No, he doesn’t.” Ren pushed him backwards and held Poe in place as he had done on Jakku. Poe struggled to regain control, opening himself up to the Force, slowly, carefully, as Luke had taught him. As Luke had taught him and Ben.

But he had never been as strong as Ben, and Ren had years more training than Poe. Holding Poe in place was little more than an after thought as he extended his other hand for Finn’s saber, pulling it from the snow.

But it resisted, and Ren was forced to let Poe go as he struggled to take a hold of it. Poe collapsed into the snow as the saber flew from the ground and past Ren into Rey’s waiting hand.

Rey and Poe both charged Ren.

Poe had always been less powerful than Ben. They had once, on Poe’s dare, flown to the site of an old Clone Wars battle and threaded the debris. Ben had navigated it with ease; Poe had only kept up because he didn’t know how to back down. It had always been like that with the two of them: Poe would challenge Ben, Ben would take it three steps further, and Poe would chase after him.

Maybe that was why Poe had run to the Resistance. It was the chance to do something Ben couldn’t. Poe had paid for that selfishness with Ben’s life.

Even injured, Ren held his own against Rey and Poe. Poe was out of practice and Rey was untrained. Her strength was in her fury, and Poe could not tap into his own strength without being overwhelmed by her and Ren.

Ren parried Rey’s strike, then ducked under Poe’s swing. He knocked Poe’s feet out from under him and Poe fell, breath knocked out of his lungs. As Ren pushed Rey back and Poe struggled to his feet, an explosion echoed through the forest. A blast of heat rippled through air and the ground rumbled beneath them.

They were running out of time.

Poe took his own lightsaber in his hand and pressed on the ignition switch. Green light joined the blue and red that illuminated the forest and he ran at Ren. He had never trained to wield two sabers, but Ren would have a hard time parrying every strike from him and Rey.

“You need a teacher!” Ren shouted. He pressed his blade against Rey’s as the ground fell away behind her. “I can show you the ways of the Force!”

Poe swung Ben’s saber and Ren turned, catching the blue blade against his own before it could strike him. Rey’s feet slipped as the earth crumbled and she staggered. Something had changed in her face. She closed her eyes and took a breath.

Poe did not have the luxury of closing his eyes. He struggled to hold his own against Ren. He found it hard enough to swing without risking injury to himself, let alone hitting Ren. And then something changed in the air. It wasn’t the destruction of the thermal oscillator, adjusting the temperature of the base and releasing tremendous amounts of energy. It was something else entirely. 

As Ren struck and Poe blocked with the blades crossed, Poe dared to open himself back up. He felt Ren’s pain and anger, expected and overwhelming, but Rey had changed. Her fear was tempered, her fury cold and indignant. Ren felt it, too.

He turned too slowly, and failed to parry as she cut across the wound Chewbacca had already inflicted. Ren stumbled backwards, barely ducking as Poe swung. He managed to deflect Rey’s second strike, but not well enough. Her blade pierced his shoulder. He blocked her third swing, but she kicked him to the ground.

Poe put his own blade to Ren’s throat, but Ren’s saber cut his leg and he crumpled as Ren stood. Rey struck again, pushing him back as he had pushed her back. She swung up and her blade cut across Ren’s face. The red light of his saber vanished. He fell.

Poe got to his feet. It hurt to put any weight on his injured leg, but he could move. He limped to Ren’s side and put Ben’s blade to Ren’s chest. He could do this, Poe thought. He could kill Ren the way he had killed Han. It would be fitting revenge for what had happened to the Jedi temple. He could end this now.

His eyes met Ren’s and Poe reminded himself there was nothing left of Ben. Whatever Rey had seen in Ren’s mind must have been wrong. Poe lifted Ben’s saber.

The ground rumbled beneath Poe’s feet. His injured leg gave out and he fell backwards. Rey caught him and pulled him away as a chasm opened up between him and Ren.

Her new energy was calming, nothing like the fear he had felt from her before. She was still Rey, and there was still something familiar about her, but he no longer felt overwhelmed. He felt centered.

“Finn,” she said, and helped him stand.

“I’ll be behind you,” he said.

She took off running and Poe limped after her. He did not look back at Kylo Ren.

—————————— ✦✧✦✧ ——————————

Poe slumped down to the floor of the _Falcon_ beside Finn, who was still unconscious. He had never felt like less of a Jedi and less of a pilot. Rey was with Chewbacca, navigating the ship back to base. He wasn’t needed in the cockpit, and he hadn’t been able to save Ben. He was going to disembark on D’Qar and have to tell his General that he’d failed. He was going to have to tell Leia that her son was lost, and that Han was dead.

Poe turned Ben’s saber over in his hands. He felt numb, and that lack of heartbreak was almost worse than the grief. 

Footsteps echoed in the corridor, and Poe did not have to look up to know it was Rey. He had closed himself off to the Force again, but her footsteps were not nearly as heavy as Chewbacca’s.

Rey knelt down across from him, but Poe kept his eyes on the saber in his hands.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

He didn’t know what she was sorry for.

“You’re the pilot who helped Finn escape the First Order, aren’t you?”

“I think Finn helped me escape, but sure, yours sounds better.”

“I’m sorry that I was suspicious of you when we met. What I saw in Ren…”

“It’s fine,” Poe said dully. He wasn’t interested in talking about Ren, but it seemed that Rey wanted to talk about nothing else.

“He was full of so much anger and fear. And then I saw you…”

“I don’t need to know what Ren thought about me.”

Rey was quiet. Then she reached her hand out and touched the bruise over his eye. He flinched, but there wasn’t really anywhere for him to go. Though he resisted the draw of the Force, Rey’s power was hard to ignore. It washed over him, and he saw the Jedi temple.

He saw what it had been, green and lush, full of laughter. A group of younglings played tag with blindfolds on at the base of a hill. Poe saw himself at the top of the hill, years younger, hair longer than it should ever have gotten, long like Ben’s. He was smiling, though he didn’t know what he was smiling at. His eyes weren’t on the kids.

And then the vision was gone. Rey pulled her hand away, and his head didn’t hurt as much as it had before. He touched the spot where he had been struck by the Troopers, but the bruise was gone.

“How did you —”

“Was that where you trained?” Rey asked. “Can you take me there?”

Poe set Ben’s lightsaber aside and ran his hands over his face. “No. You don’t want to go there. It doesn’t look like that anymore.”

“Can you teach me?”

Poe looked at her, and tried to see past her power. She must have been about Ben’s age, with soft brown eyes like his. Her features were gentler, soft where his was hard. Her face and hands, though, were covered in dirt, and her hair was falling out of the buns it had been tied up in. There was a scrape on her cheek, either from the battle with Ren or her own torture at the hands of Troopers.

Poe looked away. “I’m not good enough to teach anyone,” he said. “You did all the work in that fight with Ren. Who taught you? Maybe I should be asking you to teach me.”

“I’m just a scrapper,” she said, and Poe laughed.

“Just a scrapper? Where from?”

“Jakku.”

So Poe had met Finn on Jakku, and Finn had met Rey on Jakku, and now here they were, on the _Millenium Falcon_ together. Poe may have spent years ignoring the Force, but this coincidence was hard to ignore.

“I know a guy,” Poe said. “I guess I can introduce you, as long as you can take me to him.” He gestured to the gleaming silver hilt clipped to her belt. “Is that yours or Finn’s?”

Rey unclipped the saber. “It belonged to Luke Skywalker.”

“Nah, I know Luke’s blade, that’s not —” Poe frowned, then looked up at Rey. “You mean that’s Anakin Skywalker’s saber? That’s Darth Vader’s saber?”

“That’s why Ren wanted it. He wants his grandfather’s saber.”

Poe snorted. “He hated his grandfather.”

Rey shook her head. “He admires Vader’s power. It’s what he’s trying to become.”

But that wasn’t what Ben had told Poe.

As Rey left Poe alone with Finn to help Chewie land the Falcon, Poe remembered the day he and Ben had heard the truth about Luke and Leia’s parentage. The secret had come out in the New Republic, and Ben had been angry at his mother and uncle for keeping such a secret from him. Poe had agreed with Ben that they were wrong, and that he had every right to be angry.

“Uncle Luke says anger is the way of the darkside,” Ben had said that night. He had sat on his mat, legs crossed.

Poe remembered that he had been stretched out on his own mat, hands behind his head. “I know, but even Master Skywalker gets angry. Remember when he caught us smearing jogan jelly on the walls of the temple? I thought he was going to kill us both.”

Poe remembered Ben’s laugh, soft and shy. “He was pretty angry. Can you blame him? There were flies in there for weeks after.”

Poe had smiled, and said, “See? Anger’s alright. You just have to feel it like everything else, then let it go when you’re ready.”

Poe remembered all of this as he disembarked from the _Falcon_. He remembered how Ben had woken from a nightmare that night and had refused to talk about it. It had been the first time that Ben did not want to talk about his nightmares.

Poe saw General Leia across the airfield, and remembered how it had been just a few rotations later that she had come and asked him to be one of her pilots. As Chewbacca rushed Finn to medical, Poe remembered how he had said goodbye to Ben.

“You’re sure you don’t want to join, too?” Poe had asked.

“I didn’t get invited.”

“Sure, but —”

“I’m not going to fight in another of my mother’s wars.”

“Okay, well, I’ll be back between missions. You won’t even have time to miss me, I’ll be gone and back so fast.”

And Poe did not remember seeing anger in Ben. He did not remember being worried at all as they had said goodbye. But when Leia reached him and Rey, grief etched on her face, Poe remembered everything that had happened on Starkiller Base. She pulled him and Rey into a hug, something she had never done for him before. 

Poe knew that whether he had seen anger in Ben or not, the truth was that Ben was dead. Han was dead and Ben was dead and neither of them were coming back.

And both counts were Poe’s fault.


End file.
